Without fail, in surveys across basically every demographic, the number one most important aspect of a job for most people is the salary — how much do facilities managers get paid where I live?

And while there are many things to go into how much you, specifically, can expect to make, there’s really good data for average salaries for facilities managers by state across America broken down by seniority level. So while your city may be slightly different than the state average, these averages give you a rough sense of what to expect for your salary.

To better understand how salaries change across America, we decided to take a look the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on average pay for facilities managers by state.

Additionally, we wanted to adjust the salary based on the cost of living in a state — because your salary goes further in North Carolina than it does in California.

The state with the best salary for facilities managers after this adjustment? That would be Administrative Services Managers.

How we determined pay by state

As we mentioned earlier, we took the average annual salary data for facilities managers from the 2016 Bureau of Labor Statistics — specifically their ‘Occupational Employment Statistics.’

To make the comparison of salaries apples to apples across states, we also took into account the cost of living in each state.

We then created an index by dividing the average wage for a state by the cost of living relative to average. As an example, the cost of living index in California is 135.9 and the average pay is $105720, so our index value would be:

$105,720 * (100 / 135.9) = $77,792

We then ranked every state on this criteria with the state with the highest salary index ranking as highest average salary for facilities managers.